Understanding a Center of Excellence (CoE)
A Center of Excellence (CoE) is a centralized team or organizational structure that provides leadership, best practices, research, support, and training in a specific area of focus. CoEs are designed to drive the adoption of new methodologies, improve skills, and ensure that the organization remains at the forefront of its industry. They serve as hubs of expertise and are critical in fostering innovation and maintaining high standards across the organization.

Core Features of a Center of Excellence

• Standardization: CoEs help establish standardized processes and practices across the organization. By developing and enforcing standards, CoEs ensure consistency and quality in the execution of projects and initiatives.
• Best Practices Repository: A CoE acts as a repository for best practices, methodologies, and tools. It collects, curates, and disseminates this knowledge throughout the organization, ensuring that all teams can benefit from proven strategies and techniques.
• Knowledge Sharing: One of the key roles of a CoE is to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration across different departments and teams. This helps in breaking down silos and promotes a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
• Training and Development: CoEs are instrumental in providing specialized training programs and resources. They help in upskilling employees, ensuring that the organization has the necessary talent to meet its strategic goals.
• Innovation Hub: CoEs serve as catalysts for innovation. They encourage experimentation, support new ideas, and provide the necessary resources and expertise to turn innovative concepts into reality.

Benefits of Implementing a Center of Excellence

• Enhanced Efficiency: By standardizing processes and practices, CoEs help in streamlining operations and reducing redundancies. This leads to improved efficiency and productivity across the organization.
• Improved Quality: CoEs ensure that best practices are followed consistently, resulting in higher quality outcomes. This not only enhances the organization’s reputation but also leads to greater customer satisfaction.
• Cost Savings: Optimized processes and efficient resource utilization lead to significant cost savings. CoEs help in identifying areas of waste and implementing cost-effective solutions.
• Faster Time-to-Market: With standardized processes and a repository of best practices, CoEs enable quicker project execution and faster time-to-market for new products and services.
• Competitive Advantage: Through continuous improvement, innovation, and adherence to best practices, CoEs help organizations maintain a competitive edge in the market. They ensure that the organization remains agile and responsive to changing market dynamics.

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So, here we will discuss what the issues with InfoPath are? What is PowerApps? Key advantages of PowerApps, and is PowerApps replacing InfoPath Forms?

Issues with InfoPath Forms

There were many reasons behind the discontinuity of InfoPath. Here we have tried to highlight some of them.

• The last version of InfoPath was released in 2013, which will no longer be supported by
Microsoft after 2026. And in Office 365, it will no longer be supported after 2023
• Microsoft also announced that there would be no new development with InfoPath
• Desktop client for InfoPath form will only be available till 2026
• It is challenging to use InfoPath forms in SharePoint online
• Coded InfoPath forms are no longer supported in SharePoint online
• Migrating InfoPath forms is a bit complicated, as they cannot be migrated easily and
directly. It requires efforts and time to migrate them and make them workable
• InfoPath browser forms don’t work on mobile devices
• It is not easy to maintain InfoPath forms

But, don’t worry! You can still access all the features of InfoPath Forms with PowerApps. Let’s know a bit about PowerApps.

What is PowerApps?

PowerApps is part of the Office 365 ecosystem that allows users to create business apps quickly without writing any code. These apps can run on almost every device and browser. Here are some other benefits of PowerApps:

1. Apps created by PowerApps can easily be deployed to Dynamics 365, SharePoint, Teams,
PowerBI, Web or any mobile device
2. PowerApps enable power users (non-technical users) to create apps quickly as it doesn’t
require any coding or visual studio
3. PowerApps almost (Not fully) replaced InfoPath and Access forms
4. Users can create simple apps directly from their browser via – https://web.powerapps.com as shown below:

5. The drag-drop UI of PowerApps enables users to add different controls, images, videos,
forms, etc.
6. There are many OOB templates available to get started, such as:

Key advantages of PowerApps over InfoPath forms

Some key benefits that make PowerApps better than InfoPath Forms are:

1. Working with different data sources in InfoPath forms is a bit complex as developers need
to check the code behind the option mostly. However, working with PowerApps is easier because it works with multiple data sources and service connections in one app.
2. PowerApps supports more than 200 connectors.
3. With PowerApps, users can connect with third-party services as well, such as Dropbox,
Google, Salesforce, Slack, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, GitHub, etc.
Now, the primary concern of most users is – how they can access PowerApps?

How to Avail PowerApps?

Well, PowerApps is not free to use. As it is a part of O365, so it is only available with Office 365 subscription.

1. Organizations having Office 365 Enterprise E1 or above plans can access PowerApps
2. It is available on per-user license basis, which means every user need a personal license
to run apps
3. There are also two standalone plans for PowerApps:
a) PowerApps Plan1 – With this plan, users can create apps to store and
manage data and do the following things:
• Create canvas and model-driven apps
• Run canvas apps
• Connect with Office 365 data
• Connect data using standard connectors and premium connectors
• Access on-premises data with an on-premises gateway, etc.
b) PowerApps Plan2 – Users can run model-driven apps with code plugin and real-time workflows
To know more about pricing visit Power Pricing. Also, you can download the PowerApps studio from here.

Conclusion
With the above points, we can say that PowerApps is more powerful than InfoPath. Though it doesn’t provide all the features of InfoPath, it is still faster than InfoPath. However, replacing InfoPath with PowerApps entirely depends on organizations. If businesses start adopting PowerApps for their every need, then InfoPath will soon be replaced by it.

The post PowerApps – Replacement for InfoPath? appeared first on AQL Technologies.

SharePoint provides an elegant integration with PowerApps. This connection can be used to create a mobile/tablet friendly view for SharePoint lists and libraries. But, many users often don’t understand how to create a user-friendly SharePoint View with PowerApps. So, here we will discuss how you can create a new SharePoint View using PowerApps.

For better understanding, let’s start with a simple list (Shown below) that contains a Title and City field (Type – Single Line of Text), for which we will create a new view “My PowerApps View.” Follow the below steps to learn:

1. Sign-in to SharePoint and go to SharePoint list. Now, click “PowerApps” in the top-bar and select “Create an App.”

2. The “Create an app” wizard will appear on the screen. Enter the name for the desired view and click “Create.” Here we have named it “My PowerApps view.”

3. On clicking Create, the PowerApps engine will start loading. It will take some time to load the engine as it builds all the connections from SharePoint and PowerApps. Once the process is complete, you’ll be able to see a default mobile view as shown below.

There are many options to customize the View for different UI/UX centric needs and business requirements. Now, let’s see how you can change the default view’s theme.

• Locate the “Home” tab on the top-left corner and click on “Theme,” and then select “Aqua.”
• You can refer to the below screenshot to understand it better. The theme will be changed instantaneously in design mode.

4. Now, we will change the layout of View to give it a more tile-like appearance. To do this, select the body of the app from the designer, and then select the Layout section from the right-hand Gallery window. From the drop-down, click “Title and Subtitle on Overlay.” It will refresh and update the screen with the selected layout as shown below:

5. Here we have added two different customizations in the app. Now, we will preview the app before publishing it to SharePoint. Click “Preview the app” button on the top-right corner or press F5.

Clicking the button will provide a real-time view of the app in a new wizard. You can still go back and make any changes to the app before publishing it.

6. To test the interaction and responsiveness of the app, click any item or search for any particular record. Here we will search for – Aditi.

As you can see, searching for any record hides other records. Now, we will show how to display this app as a view in SharePoint.

7. Go to the “File” tab and click “Save.”

After saving the settings, you’ll be prompted to the Publish screen. Click “Publish” to publish the view on SharePoint list.

8. Now, go to the original SharePoint list and select “My PowerApps View” from the PowerApps view.

9. Selecting the “My PowerApps View” will display the newly designed tab.

User can add new entries from the same view, by clicking the “+” icon. Also, they can sort the records based on their requirements. Using these steps, you can easily create a new View using PowerApps.

Conclusion
PowerApps are specially designed to target users that are outside the context of SharePoint and uses mobiles/tablets. After installing PowerApps on their Android or iPhone devices and authenticating themselves, they can access this view with the PowerApps URL shared with them. This will elevate the PowerApps experience across SharePoint to its full capacity.

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